Possible SCAM alert:
This afternoon, a young man wearing an orange reflective vest and a hard hat helmet knocked on my door. He said he was "from the utility". I asked him "what utility" and he said PG&E.
He said that I might have been overcharged last month and he wanted me to go get my bill or show him my PG&E statement on my phone to "verify charges".
I don't think he was wearing an ID badge and his "from the utility" introduction sounded weird, if he was from PG&E, why not say that? Given he was claiming to be "verifying charges", why was he dressed like he was on a job site?
It seemed like deception theater to me.
This sounded very weird, so I told him that for all I knew he was just a guy with a vest pulling some sort of scam. He got mad and said "I'm not trying to scam you", and he huffily and quickly walked off, again adding to the air of him being a scammer.
The more I think about it, the more I'm sure he was a scammer. I imagine looking at my PG&E statement might give him some info useful in identity theft. Plus if he got near my phone, he might have some sort of tech on him able to get data out of my phone.
Perhaps the scam was something I haven't, or would never guess.
If PG&E were really trying to refund me an overcharge, I doubt they send someone with a clipboard, vest, and hardhat to verify data that I am sure they have in their computers.
He knocked on the door at about 3:30 p.m., and I was freshly home from my job. This is a time when most working people would be at work. Thus more elderly, and perhaps less suspicious people, would be home to be taken advantage of by an official-looking well-dressed young person.
#jtg